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Clean, Beautiful Living

The Replacements: Josh Rosebrook Styling Cream

In making the switch to green beauty, some products are particularly hard to replace. In this series of posts I will highlight the treasures discovered during my search for products that work as well, if not better, as their conventional counterparts.

I acknowledge that it may seem excessive for me to feature another Josh Rosebrook product in the Replacements series, but I can’t fight facts: his Styling Cream is, without exaggeration, a life-changing product. My discovery of the Styling Cream, thanks to the recommendation from the lovely Marcy of Naturally Marcy, was a culmination of years spent trying to find the right styling product and at a time when I pretty much despaired of finding anything that would actually work.

The thing is, I have Bad Hair. It’s not only both thin and fine (lucky me!), but also oily. Thankfully, I am able to pull off short hair and, in fact, a pixie haircut has long become a part of my “look”. Unfortunately, because my hair is so fine, it requires fairly strong styling products to keep any sort of a shape. To add an extra bit of fun to this delightful litany of woes, I also suffer from an incredibly sensitive scalp. I have discovered that petrochemicals are the number one culprit for causing irritation and it so happens that those same petrochemicals are usually topping the list of ingredients for conventional hair waxes and pomades (even luckier me!).

Clean hair styling creams and pomades replace petrochemical and other assorted nasties with natural oils and butters. This is, clearly, exponentially better for our heads and our planet, but it means that they make my wimpy hair look like I dipped my head in a vat of grease. I had some luck with Yarok’s lovely Feed Your Do Styling Whip, but it never gave sufficient hold and after a couple of hours of use my hair would become an oily, limp mess. I have tried a few sorta-almost clean styling waxes and pomades, but none of them worked: they irritated my scalp or weighed down my hair. One high-end, mostly clean product worked well, but it contained clay, which helped tamp down the grease, but left my hair looking as if i had a nasty case of dandruff.

The texture of the Josh Rosebrook Hair Cream is that of a medium-stickiness, fairly dry pomade.

This is why the Rosebrook Hair Cream was a miracle in a minimalist jar. It doesn’t just work, it works better than many of the conventional styling products I have tried. The Cream provides excellent hold: this may be the first time in my life that when I sweep my hair up and away from my face, it doesn’t just stay put, but maintains some loft. It is also not even the tiniest bit greasy. In fact, I have noticed that on the days when I use the Cream, I don’t actually need to wash my hair the next morning: something that was never an option for me before. It’s almost as though the Cream is actually acting like a dry shampoo.

Now here is the crazy thing: according to its ingredient list, the Cream contains shea butter, some plant oils and an infusion of various herbs. Sounds like a screenplay for Grease the Musical, doesn’t it? In fact, this product’s action seems so unlikely considering its ingredients, that I would have been tempted to suspect shenanigans. Fortunately, it’s pretty much impossible to trick my scalp: the best testament to the purity of Josh Rosebrook’s ingredients is how calm and happy it has been since I started using the Hair Cream. Not only that, it would seem that the Cream’s fabulous herbal infusion is actually making my hair stronger and healthier.

I am not sure what makes this product so special. It might be the herbs, it could be Dark Magicks. Whatever wizardry Josh Rosebrook might be using, however, one thing is clear: his products have earned a permanent spot in my bathroom cabinet and in my heart.